Witch Finder Read online

  I’m selling myself for you, she cried in her heart. If I don’t do this, they will kill you – do you understand that? I can’t save myself – but I can save you.

  But she could not tell him that.

  She only nodded, and swallowed against the pain in her throat.

  ‘I want you to go away, forget me.’

  ‘How can I forget you?’ He turned, his face full of anger, but she was not afraid, not like she had been at the sight of Sebastian’s fury. Luke might hate her, for a while, but he would never hurt her, she knew that. He would hurt himself, first. ‘How can you ask me that? I love you.’

  The words were spoken almost before she had time to realize what they meant. There was silence in the stable as the words hung between them, like a spell. His eyes held her. She could not look away.

  She moved across the space between them and put her hand on his cheek, feeling the rough stubble of his beard beneath her fingers, drinking in his clear hazel eyes, the way his brows were dipped in anger or incomprehension, the lines at the corner of his mouth and eyes, the dusting of straw fragments in his hair and on his shirt.

  With her other hand she took his collar and pulled him down to meet her. His lips were soft against her bruised ones and he kissed her gently, carefully, as if afraid to cause her any more pain.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m tough.’

  His lips on hers, his hands around her waist, lifting her up, holding her to him. She never wanted him to let go. Her hands were in his hair, caressing his face, smoothing away the lines and the dust and the pain . . .

  Then she steeled herself and pulled away.

  ‘You have to forget me.’

  ‘I will never forget you,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘Oh!’ She put her hands to her face, pressing against her eyes, feeling the bruises that Sebastian had left flare with pain. ‘I wish that were true.’

  She moved across to the lamp standing in the window, high above the straw, and opened the tiny glass door that shielded the flame. Luke watched her for a moment, puzzled, and she took out the rosemary from her skirt and began put it to the burning wick.

  As it flared up his face changed.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I want you to forget, Luke. Forget everything that happened. Forget my family. Forget Sebastian and Southing and this house. Forget everything you ever knew about witches, forget—’ She stumbled and choked, and forced herself on. ‘Forget me.’

  ‘No!’ Luke’s face was full of a blank horror. For a minute he stood, frozen, too horrified to move. Then as the rosemary twigs flared up he seemed to come to his senses and leapt across the few feet between them, his hands outstretched, reaching desperately for the lamp and the burning sticks.

  ‘Oþstille!’ Rosa screamed before he could reach her, and Luke dropped like a felled tree, his head hitting the flags with a crack that made her cry out.

  He lay very still and for a moment she could only stand, her breath sobbing between her teeth as the rosemary twigs burnt. At last the flame died away and there was nothing but ashes left.

  ‘Luke?’

  He lay face down, unmoving, but when she put her hand to his back she could feel he was breathing, his shoulder moving almost imperceptibly beneath her palm. There was fresh blood soaking the white bandage across the back of his head. Brimstone gave a whicker of concern and shifted uneasily in his stall.

  ‘Luke?’ Rosa asked again. He didn’t answer. She knelt on the cold stone floor and kissed him, once, very gently on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Luke. Be happy. I hope you get your forge.’

  Her throat swelled suddenly with unshed tears and she straightened and turned to go.

  ‘Two days? I don’t care if there’s only two hours to go, he’s not well!’ William’s angry voice filtered up the stairs to where Luke was lying in his narrow bed, his face to the wall.

  ‘He promised, William.’ John Leadingham’s croaking rasp. ‘In a few days it’ll be out of my hands. I’ll have to pass the matter up to the Inquisitor and he ain’t likely to be—’

  ‘I don’t. Bloody. Care!’ William spat, his voice rising on the last word. ‘I’m telling you, the lad barely knows his own name, let alone who he’s supposed to be killing. There’s a clot on the back of his head the size of a potato – Phoebe Fairbrother found him in the gutter outside the market at chucking-out time, did she tell you that? Lying in a pool of filth in the clothes he went away in. She hardly recognized him and he was too far gone to recognize her. He’s been in that room for three days and nights and he’s yet to manage more than “Yes, Uncle” and “No, Uncle”. He doesn’t remember anything of the last month, not even the meeting. What do you want me to do? Turn him out in the street with a knife and tell him to get on with the task?’

  ‘Listen, Brothers . . .’ It was Benjamin West, his voice placating. ‘Who’s to say he hasn’t done it, eh? He can’t tell us himself, but perhaps that’s how he got isself into this state. Perhaps it were the girl’s dying curse, like.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Leadingham’s voice was doubtful. ‘It don’t sound likely to me. Who would’ve taken him to the market, if she was dead? It doesn’t make sense. But I’m willing to postpone judgement until we know for sure.’

  ‘But it don’t make sense either way,’ West said plaintively. ‘What’s the alternative – they found him out? Why’s he not dead then, answer me that?’

  There was a silence, a long uncomfortable silence, as the men turned the question over in their minds. Then William spoke, his voice flat and hard.

  ‘None of it makes sense. But I’ll not see the lad dragged before the council in the state he’s in, and there’s an end to it. If you can’t find the girl alive then Luke’s job is done, as far as I’m concerned. Now, leave him alone.’

  Luke heard their muffled voices as they took their leave, and then the house fell silent. He sighed, tracing with his gaze the familiar cracks in the bedroom wall, as he’d done on sleepless nights ever since he was a small boy. The years were still there, stretching back in his memory, but there were gaps, like the cracks in the wall. A gap around his parents’ death and his coming to live with William. Where they had died there should have been memories – and pain. He could feel the shape of its absence, but try as he might, the memory itself was gone. And gaps, too, throughout the years, things he could not remember, gatherings with men he knew, faces he remembered, but whose reason he could not recall. And worst of all was that great aching gap of the last month, like a hole punched in his mind. He could remember nothing. Nothing. What had he done? Who was the girl they had been talking of, downstairs? Had he killed someone, was that what they meant?

  He sat up and put his hand to the wound on the back of his head. It was healing, slowly. William had cropped his hair short to help stop infection and he felt the unaccustomed bristles against his palm as he rubbed his hand across the back of his skull. It was closed up enough not to need a bandage now, although it seeped sometimes at night, a clear pink fluid that stained his sheets. His skull was in one piece and that was something. William said it was concussion and the memories would come back in a day or two. He had said that yesterday and the day before. Luke no longer believed him. This was not concussion, this was permanent, as if his memories had been burnt away, cauterized like an infectious lesion of the brain.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed, shivering at the cold on his bare skin, and began to dress, pulling on the clothes his uncle had laid out for him two days ago in the hope that he might get up. As he buttoned his shirt he felt the skin on the back of his shoulder pull tight, as if there was a new-healed scar there, but he had no recollection of a wound. He twisted his head to look. There was a mark, the flesh turned thick and shiny where it had healed. He could not quite see what it was, but it looked like – a hammer, perhaps? He had
never seen it before and it chilled him. Here was something else that had fallen into the cracks in his mind, lost for ever. What had he cared about so deeply that he had let it be branded into his skin? Whatever it was, he had forgotten it, along with everything else.

  He made his way slowly down the stairs, half hoping to find his uncle already gone to the forge. But he was there.

  ‘Luke!’ William turned, his mouth open with astonishment. Then he pulled a chair out from the table. ‘Luke, lad, I didn’t think to see you down today. Sit down, sit down.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Luke said gruffly, but he sat and allowed William to put a bowl of broth in front of him, and half a pint of ale. William watched anxiously as Luke tried to eat the soup.

  ‘Come on, lad,’ he said at last. ‘You’re not going to mend by picking like a fussy maid.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle. I can’t, I’ve got no heart for it.’ He laid down the spoon. ‘I heard them, downstairs. What was John Leadingham on about? What task?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ his uncle said fiercely. ‘John Leadingham’s an officious fool. I’ll not have him bothering you. It’s . . . business stuff. Nowt to do with you.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like business,’ Luke said warily. ‘And it seemed to be a lot to do with me. What were they on about? What girl? And what killing?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ William snarled, so fiercely that Luke only sighed and picked up his ale.

  After a long draught he spoke again.

  ‘I thought I might call past the dairy after work, see how Minna’s doing.’

  William looked uncomfortable at that and he pushed his chair out from the table and walked to the window, to look out into the cobbled lane.

  ‘Well . . . as to that . . .’

  Luke looked up. There was something in his uncle’s voice, something uneasy. ‘As to what, Uncle? Is Minna all right?’

  ‘I suppose there’s no use beating round the bush,’ William said heavily. He came back to sit at the table and clasped his hands. ‘She’s gone, Luke. D’you remember Bess got sick?’

  Luke strained his memory and then shook his head angrily.

  ‘Well, she did. If I told her once, I told her a thousand times, she should’ve sold the mare while the going was good, got a donkey, put the money in the mouths of those kids. But she wouldn’t. And then Bess got ill and Minna poured good money after bad taking the nag to a horse doctor who told her the case was hopeless and took her shillings all the same.’

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ There was a feeling of fear, bordering on panic, rising in Luke’s gullet. He knew, he knew, somehow, that this was connected with the great gaping void in his memory – and yet the memories wouldn’t come. The more he grasped at them, the more insubstantial they became.

  ‘We don’t know. She went for a factory job, that’s all we heard. Nick Sykes couldn’t tell us where or who; she had a card, that’s all he knew, but he didn’t see it. He can’t read anyhow.’

  ‘And she never came back?’

  ‘No. She sent back two shillings by a messenger boy and promised more the next week, but it never came.’

  ‘Who’s looking after the kids?’

  ‘They’ve gone to the workhouse two days ago. Don’t look at me like that, Luke. What could we do? I’ve not got the time nor space to house those kids; neither have any of our friends. Times are hard. We did what we could – whipped round to give them a square meal, sent money and clothes, but you could see the way it was going, Nick Sykes took the money and drank it away, and the food and clothes he sold. There was nothing for it. They’re in the workhouse orphanage until Nick mends his ways or Minna comes back.’

  He did not say what he was thinking, but Luke knew his uncle well enough to read it in the sadness in his eyes: the one was as unlikely as the other.

  The engagement was not supposed to be announced until the spring, but somehow all London seemed to know, and overnight the Greenwood name was good for credit at the drapers’ and dressmakers’. Alexis found his application for a secretaryship at the Ealdwitan miraculously approved and when Rosa’s face healed she spent her days trailing miserably round department stores, milliners’ and haberdashers’ after Mama and Clemency, watching her trousseau grow ever larger, second only in magnificence to Mama’s own wardrobe.

  She knew that Mama was growing impatient with her misery, but Sebastian, strangely, did not seem to mind her reluctance to talk about their wedding, her refusal to set a date. In fact she had hardly seen him since they had become engaged. His father had died, unexpectedly, and he was very busy at the Ealdwitan and at Southing, trying to sort out the endless tangles of legacies and entailments and death duties. Rosa was ashamed that her first feeling on hearing the news had been not sorrow for Sebastian but relief, that here was a reason to postpone the wedding – a reason that even Mama could not possibly object to, nor blame on Rosa.

  She saw Cassandra, once, in town. They were waiting under the canopy at Fortnum’s for the carriage to come round, when a voice spoke at her elbow.

  ‘Rosa? I’m not mistaken, am I?’

  Rosa turned and saw Cassandra’s small white face at her elbow, her deep-blue eyes as wide and startling in London as they had been at Southing.

  ‘Cassie! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come up to town with my governess.’ She indicated a pinched, grey-faced woman who was standing by the road anxiously scanning the thoroughfare for a carriage. ‘We are buying winter woollens. Are there any two more dreary words in the English language? I’m so glad we’ve met. I didn’t have a chance to tell you how very glad I am that we are to be sisters.’

  ‘Are you glad?’ Rosa said doubtfully. ‘I had the impression at Southing that you didn’t approve.’

  ‘I did not say I am glad you’re marrying Sebastian,’ Cassandra said gravely. She looked at Rosa with her penetrating blue eyes and Rosa had the impression once again that Cassie was seeing right through her, to her past and perhaps even future. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ Rosa said miserably. She wished she could have answered the question without evasion, but there was something about Cassie’s clear gaze that made it very hard to lie.

  ‘I’m not,’ Cassie said bluntly. For a minute Rosa couldn’t speak and before she could recover Cassie went on. ‘He was a bully and a brute. He broke Mama and he broke Sebastian too, in a different way.’

  ‘A-and you?’

  ‘He never spoke to me. He pretended I did not exist. I think, perhaps, he was afraid of me, of my blindness, of what I could see.’

  ‘I – I’m so sorry,’ Rosa stammered. ‘I lost my own father b-but . . .’

  But he was a wonderful man, she wanted to say. He was everything to me. But she could not say it, it would have sounded like boasting after Cassie’s confession. He broke Mama . . . Sebastian too . . .

  ‘I wish,’ she said slowly, ‘I wish I’d had an opportunity to see your mother again. Before I left. I never had a chance to say thank you for what she did – I owe her my life. Would Sebastian—’

  ‘No!’ Cassie spoke urgently, cutting across Rosa’s faltering words. She felt for Rosa’s arm, her fingers closing painfully tight on Rosa’s sleeve. ‘No, for all our sakes, please – the best thing you can do for Mama is forget you ever saw her. And whatever you do please never mention to Sebastian what happened.’

  ‘But why?’ Rosa said. She matched her voice to Cassie’s – not quite understanding why they were whispering, but Cassie’s anxiety was contagious. ‘I know madness in the family is considered a disgrace by some, but now we’re engaged . . .’

  Cassie only shook her head, the ribbons on her hat fluttering in the winter breeze. Her small face was determined, her chin set, and there was something almost like Sebastian’s immutability in her expression.

 
Rosa opened her mouth to argue, but before she could go on, Cassandra’s governess came hurrying up and Rosa had no choice but to join in the pleasantries as they took their leave, promising to meet soon, before Christmas, before the wedding for certain. The last thing Rosa saw was Cassie’s pale little face in the window of the Knyvet carriage, above their coat of arms.

  On the drive home she thought of Sebastian’s mother, and of his father, who she had never met. And she thought of her own father, of his round jolly face, his soft beard, the way his eyes twinkled beneath his top hat when he came home on winter nights. He had loved her – he had made her feel safe. There were very few people she could say that about, in her life. Except, perhaps, Luke.

  And now they were both gone.

  ‘Tea!’ Mama said to James as they climbed the last few weary steps to the front hall. ‘And biscuits. And please tell the maid to see to the fire in the drawing room.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, madam, the fire is banked already. Mr Knyvet is waiting in there.’

  ‘Mr Knyvet?’ Mama dropped her packages on the hall table and rushed to the mirror to pull off her hat and adjust her hair. Then she turned to Rosa. ‘Oh, you’re a disgrace, Rosa. Trying to tame your hair is like trying to comb an – an octopus. Or a hedgehog.’

  ‘Mama!’ Rosa shrugged away from her mother’s pinching fingers. ‘I’m sure Sebastian doesn’t care about my hair.’

  ‘Sebastian will no doubt expect his wife to be impeccably groomed, as he is himself,’ Mama said sharply, but she let go and Rosa entered the drawing room.

  Sebastian had his back to the door, staring into the roaring fire. Rosa felt its warmth on her face and wondered again at the change in their fortunes wrought overnight by that one simple word: yes. Where a few weeks ago there would have been meagre sticks and a few chips of coal, now the fire leapt and danced in the wide grate, its heat reaching every corner of the long room.

  Her fingers hurt, the heat of the fire thawing them too fast for comfort, and she felt suddenly small and mean and full of self-hate. Sebastian’s name had brought all this. The logs in the grate, the parcels in the hall, the joint they would eat tonight. And she could not love him for it.